GREENSVILLE, S.C. — Not a single NCAA tournament has been played without Tennessee in the field. The Lady Vols dance annually, extending the legacy of late Hall of Fame head coach Pat Summitt.
Yet, after a brutally unsuccessful end to the season, a rough SEC tournament showing and an on-court product full of perplexing questions, there are some rumblings about whether this might be the year the streak is broken for Tennessee (16-13).
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Tennessee would enter the NCAA tournament on a seven-game losing streak, including that uninspiring one-and-done showing at the SEC tournament in Greensville, where it lost to Alabama, 76-64, in the second round. Second-year head coach Kim Caldwell said afterward she believes the team is worthy of an NCAA at-large bid.
“We’ve played the hardest schedule in the country,” Caldwell said. “I think the majority of that came in February, but we have significant wins, and I think that we hope to get in and continue to try to be a different team.”
That Tennessee plays in the loaded SEC puts into context its barely .500 record. The SEC’s automatic bid went to Texas, which upset No. 1 seed South Carolina in the tournament championship Sunday. Those two programs are expected to take half of the NCAA tournament’s four No. 1 seeds. Two more SEC programs could bag No. 2 seeds, making four elite programs those in the SEC have to face.
The final stretch of games would make any opponent shudder. The Lady Vols played projected No. 1 seeds UConn, South Carolina and Texas in a two-week span at the start of February. After a one-possession loss to Texas at home on Feb. 15, they faced Ole Miss two days later due to rescheduling issues. It was four games in nine days.
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They finished with LSU and Vanderbilt, non-No. 1 seeds who could crash the Final Four party. Tennessee’s last win came more than a month ago, on Feb. 12 at home over Missouri (16-16, 4-12 SEC). They lost 10 of their final 12.
“Our February, the back half, has been absolutely brutal,” Caldwell said. “[We] really need to regroup and get back to who we want to be and move forward from there.”
The selection committee takes into consideration early performance versus late performance, a criterion the Lady Vols have failed. They finished the season 5-11 in Quad 1 games, and 3-2 combined in Quad 2 and 3 games.
They’ve also not been competitive in some of their bigger losses, and the observable component is in the gutter. The team looked lost, disinterested and unwilling to do anything but dribble into double teams in the paint.
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The vibes were completely wrong, even after the frustrating on-court product fizzled. Leading scorer Talaysia Cooper did not play the fourth quarter of the SEC tournament game and was seen exiting the locker room to go outside with a staffer during the open media period. She did not return to speak to reporters.
Caldwell, who exited the court on the opposite side of her team and its locker room, said it was to give the junior guard some air. Senior guard Nya Robertson also backtracked on the podium after saying she didn’t think the team was ready.
“I wouldn’t say we weren’t ready,” Robertson said after a lengthy pause. “… We just laid down a little too much.”
Those criteria aren’t great, but there are others that lean in their favor on Selection Sunday. There are 37 at-large bids available, and they rank 20th in NET as one of nine SEC teams in the top 30. Pulling out the five automatic bids ranked above them (UConn, UCLA, Texas, Duke, West Virginia), they are No. 15 on the list. The committee does not take only NET into consideration, but it is a strong indicator of tournament teams.
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The Lady Vols’ NET strength of schedule is fourth, and their non-conference NET SOS ranks 21st, so to Caldwell’s point, it hasn’t been an easy road. They rank 32nd in Wins Above Bubble, a qualifier that is on the line if it were the only thing taken into account. Their non-conference WAB is not much better at 36th. The only “bad loss” is to Mississippi State, which finished 5-11 in SEC play and ranks 43rd in NET. Their other non-con losses are to NC State (NET 25) to open the season and ACC runner-up Louisville (11).
The Lady Vols are sitting around the 8 or 9 seed line instead of the 4-5 area they hovered around before the collapse. The question isn’t whether Tennessee will make the field. It’s if it can reassert itself to do anything positive once it reaches it.
